THE GATHERING OF THE FAITHFUL AROUND CHRIST

SAINT CATHERINE DE’ RICCI OP  

Heb 12:1-4; Ps 22:26-28,30-32; Mk 5:21-43

Our Struggle against Sin and Evil

The Gospel tells of a large crowd gathered around Jesus Christ when he crossed to the other side of the lake. A crowd is always an amorphous gathering of people with different intentions. That they gathered around the Lord never indicates their faith in him. The same is true in our churches, where people come together for various purposes. The general assumption is that they gathered to worship God. As admonished by the author of the letter to the Hebrews, it is always good to gather around Jesus Christ as a community for whatever purpose they gathered. The physical gathering is the first stage of gathering the people of God, for the people physically gathered around Jesus Christ are children of God in a generic sense; that is, he made them, and they belong to him. As the Psalm states, it is a duty all must fulfil before God. “All the earth shall remember and return to the Lord, all families of the nations worship before him; They shall worship him, all the mighty of the earth; before him shall bow all who go down to the dust.” All mortals must come before the Lord to worship him, willingly or unwillingly, when they recall that their existence comes from him alone.

From this first crowd of people, who gather out of the necessity of nature, the author distinguishes a second gathering of people in a great cloud. They are witnesses gathered around Jesus Christ and not just people. They gather in a great cloud because of the mystery of Jesus Christ that absorbs them. The great cloud also signifies their manner of vision by faith. Faith is never a clear vision but shrouded in mystery and dark to the senses. “With so many witnesses in a great cloud on every side of us, we too, then, should throw off everything that hinders us, especially the sin that clings so easily, and keep running steadily in the race we have started.” Following the author, the focus on Jesus Christ separates us from the general crowd and elevates us to the level of those in a great cloud as witnesses. Without focusing on Jesus Christ daily, we will witness nothing about him or our faith in him. Each of us goes deeper into the cloud the more we throw off the sins clinging to us, which vitiate our spiritual energy by taking a chunk of our attention from Christ daily. Hence, we cannot remove the clinging sins without increasing our focus or attention on Jesus Christ. “Let us not lose sight of Jesus, who leads us in our faith and brings it to perfection: for the sake of the joy which was still in the future, he endured the cross, disregarding the shamefulness of it, and from now on has taken his place at the right of God’s throne.” Through the circles of presentations, purifications, and sacrifices, we follow his path to his throne at the right of God.

We must never forget that God allows the demons to join the crowd gathered around him. But he does not allow them to show their true form to us, but we discover their presence and devious schemes and works by the fruits of those they use as agents. Who are their agents? Any of us who removes his focus from Jesus Christ to creatures becomes an agent of evil forces. To overcome the forces of evil and their agents, Jesus refused to deviate from the will of the Father until death. “Think of the way he stood such opposition from sinners and then you will not give up for want of courage. In the fight against sin, you have not yet had to keep fighting to the point of death.” Both the woman with the issue of blood and Jairus, the synagogue official, refused to be distracted from their faith-focus on Jesus Christ, and they received what they asked from the Lord. The faith and focus on Jesus Christ raised these two from the general crowd gathered around Jesus Christ to be part of the many witnesses in a great cloud around Jesus Christ. To battle sins clinging to us, by which we act as agents of evil and demonic forces, we must keep a steady focus on Jesus, the beginning and the end of our faith.

Saint Catherine de’ Ricci lived a Christ-focussed life to attain a high spiritual perfection. She was born to a noble family near Florence in 1522. She entered the Dominican convent at the age of twelve. Inspired by Friar Savonarola, she promoted regular life for thirty-six years as the prioress of the convent. God favoured her with extraordinary mystical experiences, the sacred stigmata at the age of twenty, and weekly ecstasies of the Passion. She was loved as a kind and considerate superior, a gentle caregiver to the sick. She died Feb. 2, 1590. May her prayers help us keep our focus on Jesus Christ daily.

Let us pray: O God, who called your handmaid, Saint Catherine de’ Ricci to seek you before all else, grant that, serving you, through her example and intercession, with a pure and humble heart, we may come at last to your eternal glory. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever.